Proposed Replacement Re: Johnson, Farber, Maher and Cochetti

[Einar Stefferud <Stef@nma.com>]

My reading of the Johnson, Farber, Maher and Cochett text is that they
are grasping at straws trying to find some way to establish legitimate
constituency definitions and boundaries so they can mount a voting
system that is guaranteed to be fair to all, and which draws some of
its structure from the US Constitutional Voting Scheme.

However, when you look at domain names as being surrogate citizens,
you discover that they do not represent much of anything that needs to
be allocated 50% of the votes on an unwieldy 18 member Names Council.

In my view, this is simply no way to assure that all the voices that
need to be given a fair hearing will get one, because the
constituencies are not well defined, as they are with the concept of
"One Person, One Vote" scheme of the US Constitution, or of any other
parliamentary voting system.

In this mailing list discussion, we have clearly seen how "One SLD,
One Vote" is subject to distorting manipulations of many kinds, and
immediately shows signs of unbalanced favor given to various SLD
registrants.

Further, the primary concept of the whole scheme is to go directly to
the end users, and then find a way to represent them at the top of a
new authority structure, which will then dispense authority downward,
along with policy to regulate and manage the operations of the DNS
ROOT, the TLD Registrars, the newly budding Registrar Industry, and
even the SLD registrants, through requirements for standard contracts
that must be used in all SLD registration contracts.

I respectfully suggest that there is a much better paradigm for
aggregating power from the edges of the Internet for the purposes of
coordinating the operations of the DNS ROOT, the TLD Registries, the
TLD Registrar Industry, the TLD owners and operators, and the SLD
registrants/users.

This paradigm is called a "Producers' Cooperative", wherein, the
collective producers of DNS Services become the electors of the
members of the Names Council, and thus the Names Council will be
answerable to the producers of the desired services, and to the their
customers.

Also, no single sector of the DNS Industry should be allowed to
control more than 25% of the vote on the Names Council.  25% of the
vote is already 50% of control.  33% of the vote is already 75% of
control.  And 50% of the vote is 100% of control.

As noted in the mailing list discussion, with non-profit corporations,
where the "stockholders" have little or nothing personally at stake,
most people do not bother to vote, so that a mere 10% or so can
control elections.  It is my view that the people who are going to be
most sensitive to User interests will be the TLD or SLD registrars who
will offer direct services to registrants, so it seems very reasonable
to be to enable the Registrars, TLD Registry Owner/Operators, and ROOT
Service Operators to each have a significant voice in the operation of
their cooperative collection of enterprises.  

Then, if you want to add some more user input, why not form an
Association of DNS Server Administrators, with membership eligibility
given to anyone that actually administers a DNS zone server at any
level of the DNS tree.  This association should charge a nominal
annual membership fee, and should then in turn represent its members
to the Names Council.  This last association of name server
administrators sorts out the difficulties with some SLDs being used to
as the top of corporate name trees, while others go for putting all
there 3LD names at the SLD level.  The correct representation identity
is DNS Zone Administrators at All Levels, not just the SLD level.

Indeed, all the confederated associations mentioned here (of Zone
Admins, Registrars, Registries and Root Servers) should have
membership fees, and should contribute funding to support the Names
Council.  In an important sense then, all this boils down to the
formation of a confederation of trade or other associations for the
purpose of providing the administration of the required coordination
of the Internet DNS Name Service.

Now we have 4 well defined constituencies, and straight forward
methods of giving them significant representation, at 25% each, all
the way down to the lowest level of DNS service, right next to the
users who buy services from competing service providers, and to the
DNS zone admins that enter host names into the DNS system.  It is my
opinion that the market can take care of sorting things out below this
bottom level.

Now then, does anyone see a way for anyone to juggle this game to rig
the voting and take over sole control?  Is there any easy way to
thwart the interests of any party with an interest in the use and
operation of the Internet?  It there any way to divert the incentives
to defeat coordination of running things in the best interests of all
concerned?  After all, the Internet thrives on cooperation and dies
from fighting.

Now, with four well defined constituencies, lets also take care of the
little problem of having too many members (18) on the Names Council.
In my opinion, and the opinion of many other people, it is not
possible to get anything done with more then 10 members, or less than
100 members.  So, since an odd number is better than an even number,
lets choose nine, with two members from each of our four
constituencies, plus a chairman selected from outside all
constituencies.  The Chair only needs to vote in case of ties.  It
will of course be wise to select a Chair that has a lot of high level
Internet Savvy and high level governing board experience in
environments (Ala Internet) that do not have an inherent central core.

Now, lets look at the problems of Trademark Industry Fair Hearing and
some other left over fair hearing problems from the last two years of
the DNS Wars.  We need to release some prisoners and right a few
wrongs before we can all relax and claim we did a good job here.

First there is the backlog of candidates for ROOT registration of new
TLD Names.  How should they be treated?

1.  Ignore them as fools who do not deserve any kind of fair hearing?
    Maybe we can just tell them to go away?  Who are they anyway?
    Does the list include the MoUvement?  And who else?

2.  Find a way to buy them off to compensate them for their efforts,
    and for any Intellectual Property that may be confiscated.  It
    will be rather difficult to just take away what is perceived to be
    owned property without a hearing of some kind, perhaps in court if
    no where else?

3.  Give them a fair hearing before a Special Fair Hearing Panel
    appointed by the Names Council, which after hearing all their
    cases, will evaluate their findings and make recommendations to
    the Names Council for actions to be taken to afford them fair
    treatment.  Is there any reason not to allow them a fair hearing
    and fair treatment.  The resulting recommendations of these fair
    hearings should also supply the Names Council with an ordered list
    of candidates for TLD insertion into the "authoritative" ROOT in
    support of an orderly process of new TLD insertions.

    Please note: If any of these "candidates really are (as has been
    widely claimed by various people over the last two years) rogues,
    pirates, thieves, or other unsavory undeserving fellows, then
    these things should show up in their fair hearing, should they
    not?  A fair hearing seems only fair, so that is what I propose.

Next, Lets talk about Trademarks.  Here too a Special Fair Hearing
panel should be set up by the Names Council to take testimony from
interested parties of all kinds on the issue of the relationships
between Trademarks of all kinds, and DNS Names of all kinds.  

And, as for other such Names Council Fair Hearing Panels, after
collecting information from hearings, the panel should evaluate and
deliberate and propose actions and policies to the Names Council for
their consideration and adoption, perhaps with modifications.

Now, there may be other areas of interest where the Names Council
should give a fair hearing to interested parties, and for each such
area of interest, a Fair Hearing Panel should be set up by the Names
Council to assure a fair hearing for all interested parties.

Some of these Fair Hearing Panels might turn out to be appropriately
long standing, while others might be one time kinds of things.
Dealing with the TLD candidate backlog will clearly be a one time
thing.  Trademarks might continue for a long time, since the friction
between Trademarks and DNS names will surely go on until the Trademark
Industry finds ways to deal with global Trademarks, and further
refines its long standing traditions of allowing more than one
trademark owner as long as they operate in different "categories".
So, it is clear that there is no way to deal with the Fair Hearing
Panel setup with one size fits all rules.  Each should fit its need.

And one last item -- All Fair Hearing Panels and the Names Council
itself should operate as Open Deliberation Bodies, and all hearings
must be open to the public, with a public record to be published on
the Internet for all proceedings.

SUMMARY:

It is my intention to offer what I have written here as a replacement
plan that does not suffer from the fascinating problems resulting from
attempts to map the US Constitution onto the Internet, where there is
no equivalence for "citizens" who can be identified and can be
allocated one vote each.  Without a very clear and simply precise
definition and identification of specific individual voting rights,
there is no way to map the US Constitution, or any National State
Voting Scheme (parliamentary or not) onto the Internet.

Instead, the Internet needs to use some other method to find or
develop consensus for coordinated group actions.  Individual actions
should of course remain freely choosable by individuals, so we are
only concerned with coordination of group actions, such as provision
of a Comprehensive Coherent Conflict-free Open TLD ROOT Zone and
Service, on behalf of all who are dependent on such a thing existing
in a robust globally operational form.  In short, DNS should enable
everyone to on the Internet to resolve the publically advertised DNS
name of everyone else who wants to be seen, though there can be no
guarantee of any ability to resolve any private DNS name that is not
advertised to the public.  INTRAnets can and must be allowed to
operate with such private, unpublished, DNS names, as a matter of free
speech and privacy rights.

This leads me to ask a very simple question: 

	What is wrong with the concept of a confederation of
	interested parties forming up a self governing structure along
	the lines that I have outlined above.


PROPOSAL:

Assuming that the US Govt White Paper will not resolve all these
issues for us, or if it does make such an attempt, I propose that we
substitute the kind of solution that I have outlined here.

In short, the so-called New-IANA Board of Directors should be charged
with fostering establishment of a Names Council (by whatever name)
along the lines of my outline above, and it should establish an
appropriate set of Fair Hearing Panels to assure that all voices with
an interest in the workings and deliverables of the DNS Service will
be fairly heard, as input to the Open Deliberations of the Names
Council or its Fair Hearing Panels.

Further, I strongly suggest that the New-IANA Board should also be
structured along the same lines, with 9 members including its Chair,
and with its members selected by the Names Council, the IP registry
Community, and the IETF Nomination Committee.  This leaves room for 2
more members to be drawn from some other communities of interest, plus
a Chair.

Best Regards;-)...\Stef